This
year marks the 100th anniversary of the Panama-Pacific International
Exposition, held in San Francisco. Most people just called it the
World’s Fair. The purpose of the exposition was to celebrate the Panama
Canal and the ease of travel it brought, but the fair also celebrated
San Francisco rising from the ashes of the devastating earthquake of
1906. What would amount to an entire city elsewhere was built for the
fair, only to be torn down afterward.

All these
structures and their lushly landscaped courtyards were united by an
earth-tone color scheme devised by muralist Jules Guérin, the Director
of Color, to reflect the California landscape. “I saw the vibrant tints
of the native wild flowers, the soft brown of the surrounding hills, the
gold of the orangeries, the blue of the sea; and I determined that,
just as a musician builds his symphony around a motif or chord, so must I
strike a chord of color and build my symphony on this,” Guérin wrote.
Architect Bernard Maybeck, who designed the Palace of Fine Arts, likened
the entire assemblage to a cloissoné brooch, with its many Italianate,
Islamic, and French-inspired buildings all clad in faux-travertine.
The
most eye-catching bauble of all was clearly the 435-foot-tall Tower of
Jewels, a mishmash of architectural references whose exterior was
covered by 102,000 two-inch cut glass “Novagems.” Constructed to hang on
small hooks and sparkle like a coating of colorful sequins, these over-sized glass “gemstones” were also sold as souvenirs of the PPIE.
Emily Post described the building as a diamond and turquoise wedding
cake. The Novagem gimmick was put forth by the fair’s lighting director,
Walter D’Arcy Ryan, who referred to their effect as “augmented
daylight.”

There were also several fabulous light
shows to dazzle visitors, exhibitions of modern technology, pavilions of
foreign culture (some of which were quite offensive), stunt pilots,
art, music, and a 5-acre scale model of the Panama Canal -that worked!
Collectors Weekly talked to curator Erin Garcia and author Laura Ackley
about the fair and what it meant to San Francisco 100 years ago.

Often, we wake up certain of two things: 1. We slept, or at
least we think we did; and 2. We had dreams. But DID we dream? Why does
remembering our dreams feel a bit like trying to grab wisps of
dissipating smoke?

In
a country where all the animals are trying to kill you, the Gympie
Gympie is a plant that just wants to make you wish you were dead. You
don’t even have to touch it to hurt, because the hairlike structures
that cover its leaves shed and make the ground around the plant
dangerous. And don't even think about using it for toilet paper.

Many
would say that endangering the Gympie Gympie is a job well begun. This
innocuous-looking greenery is one of the most feared plants in the
world. Its sting is so agonizing that a slight brush to the hand from
one of the leaves can make a person throw up from the pain.
Not
that the leaves are the only dangerous part. Only the roots of the
Gympie are free of the fine hairs that lodge in the skin and deliver the
sting. Every subsequent moment of pressure on the hairs causes them to
put out more poison into the skin. The pain feels like fire, and it
lasts. As long as the hairs are embedded in the skin, the pain keeps
coming. Stings from the Gympie cause the lymphatic system to go into
overdrive. A person's throat, armpits, and groin swell up and ladle on
the pain as the lymph nodes expand.